For a restaurant named Spaghetti Club, Mamas Dining Group’s new Richmond spot has surprisingly few spaghetti dishes on the menu. The total count comes in at just two: spaghetti vongole, a dish of spaghetti cooked with clams, and squid ink spaghetti with tomato, prawns, salumi XO and pangrattato (toasted breadcrumbs).
Rather than lean heavily into the name, the Swan Street restaurant traverses Italy with dishes including 10-hour baked ziti, pork chop cotoletta and tiramisu.
Spaghetti Club is a new direction for the group, which ventured into European food with Windsor Wine Room but has largely focused on Asian fusion restaurants, including the Japanese-ish Disuko, and Vietnamese-ish Hochi Mama and Straight Outta Saigon.
The new restaurant, the story goes, is inspired by weekly Monday night family dinners held at Mamas co-owner Lucas Gugliandolo’s nonna and nonno’s house. Growing up, he remembers upwards of 20 people gathering to eat. “Nonno was a really serious family man and demanded the family would all be there on Monday nights.”
His late paternal nonno, Mario Gugliandolo, was born in Messina, Sicily, and started his professional life working in pastry kitchens before moving to Australia, working in kitchens across Queensland, Tasmania and Melbourne, adding to an orange recipe book as he travelled around. That book is the restaurant’s source material.
“We wanted some inspiration from the book, but we didn’t want to just do a whole thing about the book. So we let Michael Flemming, our head chef, really take the lead with this,” Lucas says.
Maccheroni alla norma (a Sicilian eggplant pasta), nonno’s lasagne (“one of his specialities”) and ricotta-filled cannoli (“my grandfather’s bread and butter”) are the most literal translations of recipes from the orange book. The lasagne is heavy on the bechamel, and a dish that makes an appearance at every significant family event from Easter to Christmas. And the cannoli, with its bubbly texture and not overly sweet filling, is made with a “confidential” ingredient passed down from Nonno.
The rest is Flemming. The chef, whose resumé includes Totti’s Bondi and Press Food & Wine in Adelaide, joined the project at the start of the year and helped set up the kitchen and team. He makes use of the open-flame oven with charred broccolini, steak with pepper sauce, woodfired focaccia with curried onion, and wood-grilled spatchcock with corn custard. They’re joined by a majority Italian wine list, plus playful cocktails such as a Mandarin Fizz and an Espresso Martini that’s served hot.
The room has a “homey feeling with nods to nonna and nonno’s house”, without making it feel too old-school. Orange tiles and yellow-tinted windows that are directly influenced by the Gugliandolo family home are counterbalanced with modern touches, including a slick marble counter that wraps around the open kitchen.
Spaghetti Club
95 Swan Street, Richmond
(03) 9969 9953
Hours:
Mon & Tue 5pm–11pm
Wed to Sun midday–11pm
www.spaghetticlub.com.au
@spaghetticlubmelbourne
Dining and Cooking